Again . . .

I don't understand what happened yet, but Niki died last night. She was fine in the morning. She was fine when Mark came inside around 3.  In fact, he said she ran out the front door and he had to bring her back in - that's more energetic than she's been in a while given her back pain. But when I fed the dogs around 9 last night she was laying by the front door next to her bed and she lifted her head, wagged her tail and then just laid her head back down next to the bowl without even trying to eat.  That was NOT Niki.  No matter how sick she's been, she almost never turns down food.  When I sat down next to her and she opened her mouth to lick me, her tongue was absolutely white!  I was shocked!  I looked and her gums were white too and she felt cold, cold, cold.  She tried hard to stand up so I helped her and she stepped into her bed and just collapsed.  And in less than 10 minutes she had stopped breathing.

She is the FIFTH of our dogs to die in just the last year and a half.  I understood the reasons for the other deaths, though.  But Niki - no.  She had some problems -- bone spurs in her spine that made movement painful for her.  Irritable bowel disease requiring a special diet.  But we certainly weren't aware of any problems that might have been life-threatening.  That is just SO scary.  

When I took her over to our vet, AVS, this morning for cremation, the head vet, Craig Alberty, a friend for more than 30 years, was there.  He's going to do an autopsy for me today to see if he can see what was wrong.   It won't be as detailed as if I had taken her over to LSU, but if LSU did the post I wouldn't be able to get her ashes back, and it's important to me that I be able to keep her ashes.

I asked him if he had heard anything about any drug interaction related to Deramaxx since I had just given her both her ivermec for heartworms and Comfortis for fleas.  I gave them to her two days apart, but that was the only thing I could think of that had happened over the last week that was any different that usual.  Craig said he wasn't aware of any, but we agreed that I would bring Ben (who is on the same exact meds as Niki was) in for some blood work just to be safe.  Ben still seems just fine, though, so I don't know . . .   

Poor Niki.

Postscript:  Craig called a while ago, but I missed his call.  He left a message that he DOES have some information for me, though, so I am hoping against hope that he discovered what happened.  We'll see when I talk with him tomorrow.